Android: pre-installed (pre-packaged) application shortcuts being removed after market update

Question

We developed a placeholder application to ship pre-installed on Android devices. All it does is to point to a market URL so that it can be updated with the real application. In effect, the "placeholder" is nothing more than an earlier version of the app with an activity that launches an intent for the market. In the market we deployed the application with a higher version number so the market is able to display the "Update" button.

All works well with a caveat: the devices will ship with a shortcut to the app in the "home" screen. Once the update is done (either through the placeholder or going manually through the market) the shortcut is removed from the screen. We need to find a way to leave the shortcut intact.

During our tests, we realized that the shortcuts are removed if we update a side-loaded application through the market. All works well (i.e. the shortcut is left in place) if the updated app was originally installed by the Market app.

However, we have an application created with Adobe Air, developed by a third party company for us, which installs just fine and leaves the shortcut in place. In other words, if we side-load and launch it, after the update is done through the market the shortcut remains in the "home" screen.

We thought at first that it could be the Adobe Air runtime listening to android.intent.action.PACKAGE_ADDED and creating the shortcut automatically. However, uninstalling Adobe Air did not change this behavior.

Is there any configuration in the Android manifest file that could be used for this purpose? Or might it be that the third party application creates a shortcut to itself before going to the market?

Answer 1

Ok. Answering my own question to help others with the same issue. It is so obvious now.

Make sure your MAIN, LAUNCHER activity is the same in both the side loaded app and the app published to Google Play.

In our stub, the entry point Activity was named MainActivityStub, while in the app published to Google Play was named MainActivity. Once the update was complete, MainActivityStub was no longer available, thus the link got removed from the home screen.